The invention relates to an automatic apparatus for producing a strip-like container housing chip-form electronic parts formed by sequentially supplying chip-form electronic parts having no lead wire into respective housing holes of a tape-like housing body.
Recently, electronic parts adapted to be directly applied to the conductive zone of a printed circuit board or the like (such as chip-form multi-layer capacitor, resistor, inductance element, etc.) have come into extensive use. In order to automatically mount such chip-form electronic parts on the printed circuit board, there has been utilized so-called magazine system comprising a tubular housing body 1 made of aluminum, plastic, etc., a plurality of chip-form electronic parts 2 layered therein, and each of the open ends of the tubular housing body 1 being sealed by a plug body 3, as shown in FIG. 1.
This magazine system, however, has the following disadvantages. The housing body set in the automatic mounting machine has to be replaced frequently since the electronic parts housed therein are limited in number. Moreover, the electronic parts are liable to be damaged on the surface thereof when supplied to the housing body or taken therefrom since the electronic parts are housed in direct contact with each other.
In order to obviate such disadvantages, there has been proposed a tape system using a tape-like housing body 6 comprising a tape-like member 4 made of flexible material, such as plastics, cardboard, etc., and provided with a plurality of holes 5 with or without bottoms as shown in FIG. 2, a chip-like electronic part being placed in each of the housing holes 5, the opening of the holes 5 being sealed by a cover sheet, such as transparent tape or the like, the tape-like housing body 6 being wound round a reel.
The tape system makes it possible to supply a fairly large number or electronic parts simply by the use of a reel of a large diameter. The tape system has a further advantage in that the electronic parts are free from damage since they are placed in the housing holes independently of each other.
According to the tape system, however, each of a plurality of independent housing holes is loaded with an electronic part one by one unlike the conventional magazine system in which a plurality of electronic parts are placed simply in layers. Thus the loading operation is complicated and by no means feasible manually.